


Snake in the Grass

by Makioka



Category: The Hill- Horace Annesley Vachell
Genre: Boarding School, Class Differences, Class-fantasies, Classism, Community: kink_bingo, Dislikable people, Hand Jobs, M/M, Underage - Freeform, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/pseuds/Makioka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Desmond loves John with his soul and his mind, and Scaife with the strength of his blood and his heart. He might love him even more because Scaife is not quite the gentleman. Wild square for Kink Bingo 2012 -class fantasies. Characters are 17 years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snake in the Grass

**Author's Note:**

> Henry is always Desmond or Caesar in the text, but he's his given name here since it's his POV.
> 
> Content: Contains class-ism consistent with both the time, and the canon. Views within do not reflect my own.

There is rather a lot of sunlight, Henry thinks as he stretches idly along the grass and lets himself bask in it. Beside him Scaife chuckles, and brushes a lock of hair back from where it has fallen on his forehead, a light touch, gone in a second and leaving only a trace of warmth. These moments are rare and quiet and Henry never wants them to end. He’s usually only as silent and still as this when John is there, and the only thing between them is the weight of John’s adoration. He never feels uncomfortable with John, never feels like John will seize anything more than Henry will willingly give. It’s solid and good, like the feel of this afternoon.

With Scaife though, generally it’s like the ground crumbles from under him. He is not John. Scaife is not beloved by his father as John is, this he knows. His father admires Scaife, speaks approvingly of his manliness, his quietness (Scaife is always quiet and listens in his company,) tells him that Scaife will go far, will climb high. But there is a coldness in his eyes, the handshake is just a second too short, and he knows that Scaife will never be anything to his father.

Henry fears sometimes what Scaife will do with that knowledge, how can Scaife care for him when he must despise everything he stands for? But then if Scaife was someone like Evans Minor, then Henry would never have spoken to him, would have looked away coldly and yawned if they were thrown together, despised the pathetic attempts that he made at being friends with the Bloods, the money he threw around, the clothing that’s just a touch too loud, the diamond-pin his mother gave him that looks gaudy and fake, and which Reade confiscated with a look of cold disdain. Scaife is nothing like that, despite his father he fits in without trying, and excels at everything he does.

All he touches turns to gold, he holds hearts and minds to him, and yet he is not of them, nor would he ever stoop so low as to try to be. Instinctively in his tastes he tallies with those around him, like the naturalists favourite chameleon he blends perfectly, it is not dissembling just fact. Yet still beneath the surface he’s different, alien, as far from Henry, John and Kinloch as it is possible to be, and this is what attracts him.

There is no flaw anywhere to be seen, no-one would suspect that he was not in entirety a gentleman, no-one except John and himself. It’s rather odd how it’s worked he thinks, he would never have thought that John was a snob, that he could dislike Scaife so much when the only possible reason could be his birth. John is repulsed by him, though he tries so hard to hide it, repulsed as much as Henry feels fascinated, draws closer to Scaife for the purpose of looking in his eyes.

John sees the flaw in Scaife’s temper in his actions. He thinks they’re unworthy of him, that they presage some doom coming that, despite his quick tongue, he can’t articulate. Henry is closer, hand in hand, he knows that it’s not Scaife’s temper or his blows, it’s the way he doesn’t indulge in either.

There are gentlemen in England who have killed others in blind rage. Sometimes in duels with pistols and sabres, other times with broken candlesticks and glass bottles. Occasionally they’ll stab someone in the back, or in a hot rage say things that will ruin a man and send him to the gallows. Bad temper is not a mystery in the aristocracy, but the iron will that holds back that temper, swallows it on itself and lets it brood is not its marker. He doesn’t shiver, doesn’t fear that Scaife will turn it on him, Scaife is gentle to a fault in general with him, the large hand that is so physically strong; so unsuited to the sprightly athlete's physique that characterises him, brushes back the lock of his hair as lightly as a feather, the iron will again holds him back from merely taking.

Yet it is different to John, John demands only his company, his silence, his love and the occasional Jonathan falling from his lips. Scaife demands _him_ , as inexorable as the rise of the working class his father fears so much. From his youngest memory he has sat on his father’s knee, as he argues with gentlemen, lords, bishops on the god-given right of some men to rule others. And every word he mouths about taking care of the poor, improving their conditions, is predicated by the silent fear that if things don’t get better, then the breaking point will come, and the choices to be made will be out of his hands. The spectre of France still hangs heavy over their heads. His father is one of the great reformers of the age, the great appeaser of the hungry masses, their most ardent champion, and their most silent foe.

He knows all this, though he could never voice it, could never explain the peculiar mixture of rebellion and thought and anger that fills him, not even to John who he thinks could perhaps understand a little bit. Could never explain that debutantes in white dresses, court-ladies in satin, gentlemen of seventy generations of noble blood can’t move him, can’t thrill him in any way at all, that there is nothing there to spark the blood, nothing there to fear, no animal attraction, nothing but the cool clean calmness of the white pages of a Burke’s Peerage.

There is nothing in any one of the bright sons of his father’s friends, nor their beautiful sisters that can seize him, not even John can have him altogether. Henry loves him; how could he not, but he loves him almost purely, with his mind and his soul, not his blood and his limbs and his heart, and all the courage in him. For courage it takes to love Scaife, to lie quietly beside him, aware all of the while, that like a lion on a silver chain he can devour to the bone.

Even in the sun he shivers, and Scaife sits up, looms over him. They are alone, and Henry wants, shudders with it, wants in the way it is ungentlemanly to want, and for such a thing as he would be scorned for, if it was known. Scaife understands, sometimes he’s like the Demon he’s nicknamed for understanding. He always offers, starts, begins with the vitalness of the crowded towns. The kiss when it comes is like fire.

He gives himself up to it, soft catch of lips that ache like desire along his limbs, and again he shivers, if this is degradation then he will happily take it. They are far out, but not so far they can’t be seen as they lie in the grass if someone comes too close, and this too thrills through him, makes him reckless, makes him revel in the knowledge that Scaife will risk everything he has built and been and worked for in this transgression. The fear is not one-sided.

He laughs triumphant, close against Scaife’s mouth, breathing the laughter into him as though it is shared, though Scaife has the devil’s wit, not the good man’s humour, and this is a joke he will not understand. No matter, the sharp scrape of stubble growing in fast sobers him quickly, and he pulls Scaife closer, kisses him for the taste of revolution, for Paris burning, for every evening on his father’s knee listening to the great and the good putting the world to rights, for the knowledge that Scaife can’t win, that his father’s handshake was brief, that John who comes after will hate and work against him always, but Henry will not, because this is too bright and beautiful and solitary for him to resist.

Scaife is rougher now, the hands that seem so incongruous against the rest of him that is so neatly built, untuck his shirt and slide up from his hips and he can’t help arching towards them, towards Scaife, his own hands unsteadily gripping loose cloth and green grass. He is filled with a sudden wildness that has met its match and is echoed between them.

It is his turn to push Scaife down, to crawl to his side and lean over him for another kiss, pushing and possessing for just a second until Scaife regains his composure and bites his lip gently as though in warning, one strong hand gripping his neck, tugging at the short strands of hair as though he longs to force Henry against him and still holds back. Henry can’t say what he wants more, Scaife to hold his control, the control that proves him not a gentleman, or to break it, to force Henry to acknowledge him, to take what he wants, what John would never dream of taking. The conflict runs through him, fires his blood until the teasing tugs at the nape of his neck are a torment he doesn’t want to stop.

He twists his neck away, and Scaife at first lets go as though burned, and then, deliberately, he leans up and drags him down and Henry goes willingly, aware of the triumph in Scaife’s eyes and allowing him it. This is Scaife’s, it always has been, perhaps always will. He has never experienced anything like this, the sharp tiny shocks running down his spine, tremors that seem to run through him, as though something deep in him is resonating with Scaife. He can feel his prick, hard beneath his trousers, but he feels no shame, no embarrassment, this is nothing Scaife doesn’t know, nothing that will shock him, in this too they are matched.

He drags Scaife’s hand to where he wants it, sighs in pleasure, sinking low and not caring. Scaife is staring at him as though amazed, as though something has been revealed, but he can’t bring himself to care, just to crave the touch. Scaife will know what to do, he drinks like a man, gambles and rides like a man, surely this is not outside his mastery. Nor does it prove to be, it is but a moment before his bags are unbuttoned and Scaife has slipped his hand inside, curling it around his prick until Henry can’t stand the tease and squirms forward, breathing harshly against Scaife’s mouth.

John is wrong he thinks vaguely in between sparks of pleasure that arch his back and make him tremble. He won’t be tainted by Scaife, but Scaife might be ruined by him, by that blind seeking for something better that characterises those who have no family, and must substitute instead running rivers of gold, and he laughs once more that John thinks him so stupid, that up this close, he doesn’t understand Scaife.

Again, it’s as though Scaife reads his mind, his expression is ugly as he caresses Henry still. “He calls you Caesar doesn’t he,” he murmurs, and laughs himself. “You know what they say about Caesar. Every woman's man and every man's woman.”

Henry feels a tremor go through him at the words, but responds as mockingly as always, “you were never one for the classics. You’re hardly King Nicomedes.”

Scaife gets his revenge easily, his fingers are slick now from Henry’s enjoyment, and he speeds up, giving Henry no chance to protest or think or even move, except to groan as Scaife with brutal practicality tugs down his bags until he is exposed, and once again tumbles him to grass as though to hide him from any gaze at all but his own, unconscious now of any control or restraint, seizing his mouth savagely, mumbling words that make no sense as he continues to stroke Henry’s now aching prick, and then with little ceremony thrust his hand further until he is pressed against Henry in a way that he had never imagined, never even thought of. He is reminded how stupid it is to underestimate Scaife in any matter, to imagine he can retain control when he has removed all barriers, remembers that men like his father, have not been able to stop men like Scaife’s father from rising.

It is to this thought that he comes, to the teasing pressure that reminds him that Scaife is not to be trifled with, and afterwards, as he lies in the warm grass and gazes near the sun, as Scaife uses his monogrammed handkerchief to wipe his hands, he is filled with a strange slow cold dread, and a reluctance to see John, as though his friend’s clear eyes will divine everything he has done. He no longer feels unmarked, no longer feels as though he can’t be tainted, and he is unsure that he dislikes it.

**Author's Note:**

> The only way I find the book bearable is if I imagine outside of John's idol-ism of Desmond, that something like this was going on.


End file.
